The Association of PET Recyclers (APR) Bharat’s ‘Bottle Ki Recycle Yatra’, a 15-day awareness initiative along the Kanwar Yatra route, has reached nearly one million Indians, taking the message of PET recycling and responsible plastic waste management to a large and diverse audience.
The campaign helped bring over 50,000 used PET bottles into the formal recycling ecosystem, demonstrating the potential of targeted, on-ground awareness initiatives to encourage responsible disposal and channel used PET bottles towards recycling.
The ‘Bottle Ki Recycle Yatra’ was designed to address a critical gap in public understanding around PET recycling and the value of used PET bottles. Interestingly, a survey conducted by APR Bharat on more than 600 consumers along the Kanwar Yatra route, reveals that while India has one of the highest recycling rates in the world, with an estimated 90 per cent of used PET bottles recovered and recycled, nearly 92.3 per cent of Indians are unaware that used PET bottles can be recycled and turned into new bottles.
Through direct engagement with citizens along the Kanwar Yatra route, the campaign sought to reinforce the message that a used PET bottle is not waste but a valuable resource that can be collected, recycled and reintroduced into the circular economy.
As part of the campaign, a specially designed van travelled across four high-footfall locations in Muzaffarnagar and Meerut engaging with pilgrims and the wider public on the importance of responsible disposal, while collecting used PET bottles generated during the pilgrimage and channelising them into the formal recycling ecosystem.
“The overwhelming response to the ‘Bottle Ki Recycle Yatra’ demonstrates that when the message of recycling reaches people directly, it can translate into meaningful behavioural action. Reaching nearly one million people and bringing more than 50,000 PET bottles into the formal recycling ecosystem in just 15 days gives us the confidence to take this initiative to a much larger national platform moving forward. Our main objective of launching the campaign was to make recycling tangible and relatable by taking recycling awareness beyond the industry and into communities,” Goutham Jain, director general, APR (Association of PET Recyclers) Bharat, said.
Implementation of mandate remains a challenge
The initiative assumes significance particularly at a time when the government has been emphasising on the need to promote austerity in imports to protect its foreign currency reserves and push for indigenisation of over 200 import-dependent petrochemical items. Global geopolitical disruptions and supply-chain volatility have demonstrated the vulnerability of industries dependent on uninterrupted supplies of virgin polymers. Transition to r-PET (recycled PET) is crucial to ensure national resource security, reduce import dependence, and ensure a more resilient domestic packaging supply chain.
Jain underscored that, although the Government has mandated the use of 40% recycled inputs in plastic packaging by 2026–27, implementation at the ground level remains limited and falls short of the intended transition towards a closed loop manufacturing ecosystem. He stressed that reliance on virgin PET derived from crude oil depletes national resources. In contrast, the large-scale adoption of recycled PET can help conserve critical resources while accelerating the transition towards a more sustainable, circular, and environmentally responsible plastic value chain.
“At a time when global polymer supply chains are experiencing volatility and India is simultaneously building significant domestic recycling capacity, recycling has a much larger role to play than simply managing waste. It can help create a more circular, resource-efficient and resilient manufacturing ecosystem for India. Every bottle that is responsibly disposed of and recycled represents a resource that can be recovered and reused,” Jain added.
